"Walker . . . weaves a surprisingly fascinating story around one animal, involving colonialism, revolution, biology, and politics . . . Hard to put down." — BooklistIn A Certain Curve of Horn, veteran journalist John Frederick Walker tells the story of one of the most revered and endangered of the regal beasts of Africa: the giant sable antelope of Angola, a majestic, coal-black quadruped with breathtaking curved horns over five feet long. It is a...

"[A] tour de force examination of the history of ivory . . . and the demise of the elephant and human decency in the process of this unholy quest." — The Huffington PostPraised for the nuance and sensitivity with which it approaches one of the most fraught conservation issues we face today, John Frederick Walker's Ivory's Ghosts tells the astonishing story of the power of ivory through the ages, and its impact on elephants. Long before gold and ge...

“[A] tour de force examination of the history of ivory . . . and the demise of the elephant and human decency in the process of this unholy quest.” —The Huffington PostPraised for the nuance and sensitivity with which it approaches one of the most fraught conservation issues we face today, John Frederick Walker’s Ivory’s Ghosts tells the astonishing story of the power of ivory through the ages, and its impact on elephants. Long before gold and gem...

A larger-than-life old man with a fondness for vodka goes on an unexpected adventure in this whimsical novel — perfect for fans of Forrest Gump and A Man Called Ove*.*After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he’s still in good health—and tomorrow is his hundredth birthday. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn’t interested, and he’d like a...

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilizationEnvironmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and S...

Jenna Butler draws on her own experiences of her grandmother's disappearance into senile dementia to reassemble a sensual world in longpoem form that positively crackles with imagery and rhythm. Identities and memories flow and flicker as she strings together fragments of narrative into stories that comprise one woman's life. It entwines her disappearing life with that of the persona of the woman's granddaughter through a choreographed confusion of identities: of she's and I's. Few poets c...

"I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks of the Ganges near Varanasi—it's a river already badly polluted, and now threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup plan. As Steven Solomon makes clear, the same is true the world over; this volume will give you the background to understand the forces that will drive much of 21st century history." —Bill McKibben...

A British journalist retraces the legendary 1874 expedition of H. M. Stanley in this "remarkable marriage of travelogue and history" (Max Hastings, author of Armageddon).When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000,. he quickly became obsessed with the Congo River and the idea of recreating H. M. Stanley's nineteenth-century journey along the nearly three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite repeated warnings that his plan ...

In this New York Times bestseller, Brian Fagan shows how climate transformed-and sometimes destroyed--human societies during the earth's last global warming phase.From the 10th to 15th centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide-a preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including much of Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful crops and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In ...

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in HistoryFinalist for the National Book Award in NonfictionFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award“Grandin tells a gripping story of high hopes and deep failure, a saga that in some ways is a morality tale for the American century.” —The Boston GlobeFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning,...

A terrifying true story of greed, corruption, depravity and ruthless criminal enterprise … On the black markets of Southeast Asia, rhino horn is worth more than gold, cocaine and heroin. This is the chilling story of a more than two-year-long investigation into a dangerous criminal underworld where merciless syndicates will stop at nothing to attain their prize. It is a tale of greed, folly and corruption, and of an increasingly desperate battle to save the rhino – which has survived for m...

The past fifteen thousand years-the entire span of human civilization-have witnessed dramatic sea level changes, which began with rapid global warming at the end of the Ice Age, when coastlines were more than seven hundred feet below modern levels. Over the next ten millennia, the oceans climbed in fits and starts. These rapid changes had little effect on those humans who experienced them, partly because there were so few people on earth, and also because those people were able to adjust r...